Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

The Past and the Present (re)Visited: War Veterans’ Representations of the Portuguese Colonial WarAna Figueiredo, Joaquim Pires Valentim, Laurent Licata & Bertjan Doosjeinconsistent representations of their sons and the author concludes that cognitive polyphasiacan be understood as a common sense’s tool that allows them to cope with the complexreality in which they live.Regarding our participants, we find some preliminary evidence for the phenomenonof cognitive polyphasia when they try to make sense of their experience and their role assoldiers in the Portuguese colonial war. As stated above, it seems that the participants havedifficulties integrating their emotional experiences into a coherent representation, withoutinconsistent aspects. Furthermore, it is also clear that these war veterans have createddifferent meanings and associations regarding their time in the war, an assertion that is alsohighlighted by their distinct representations of the war experience versus being in Africa.Further research should aim to understand the means by which cognitive polyphasiaallows for the construal of social representations associated with different meanings aboutthe colonial war. Therefore, the next step in our work is to include the remaining 25 interviewsin our analysis and investigate the processes of objectification and anchoring thatallow our participants to make sense of their experiences and create shared representationsof this period of Portuguese history.The present study has focused on five aspects of Portuguese war veterans’ socialrepresentations of the colonial war: 1) the emotional experience of the war; 2) the perceptionsthe war veterans have regarding Africans from the former colonies at the time of theconflict and in the present day; 3) their perceptions of the decolonization process of theformer Portuguese colonies; and 4) the personal consequences the war had in their lives.We were able to show that, in general, the veterans’ social representations of thecolonial war were composed of multiple aspects and meanings, which may, at times, seeminconsistent or incoherent. Nevertheless, the social representations approach allows us tounderstand the meanings and associations they have created of the war experience, byallowing the integration of those distinct components, which are associated with differentaspects of the veterans experience in the war.Future research might fruitfully expand the social representations perspective regardingthe experience of war veterans and the implications of our findings for the ways in whichthe Portuguese colonial war is portrayed and dealt with in the present day. Furthermore, thisline of research may be of importance to understand the intergroup dynamics between thegroups involved in the colonial war in the present day.ReferencesCabecinhas, R., & Feijó, J. (2010). Collective memories of Portuguese colonial action in Africa:Representations of the colonial past among Mozambicans and Portuguese youths.International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 4(1), 28-44. doi:0070-ijcv-010111Clémence, A. (2001). Social positioning and social representations. In K. Deaux & G. Philogène (Eds.),Representations of the social (pp. 83-95). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc.Deschamps, J. C., Vala, J., Marinho, C., Lopes, R. C., & Cabecinhas, R. (2005). Intergroup relations, racismand attribution of natural and cultural traits. Psicologia Política, 30, 27-39.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches89